Harker recently received accolades for its participation in the 2016 High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling (HiMCM). In November, two teams of Harker students worked on solutions to real-world mathematical problems over a period of 36 hours. The first team – made up of sophomores Ayush Pancholy, Ashwin Rammohan, Nishant Ravi and Akshay Ravoor – devised a way to reduce course congestion during a 2,000-person triathlon, earning them an honorable mention in the contest.
The second team – comprising juniors Michael Kwan, Rajiv Movva and Shaya Zarkesh, and sophomore Katherine Tian – earned a successful participant designation for developing a method to expand a small business to serve the continental United States.
Both teams worked through an entire weekend, with each team creating a 30-page document outlining in detail how each of their solutions would work. “I could not be more thrilled by the energy, enthusiasm and fun the students had over the weekend,” said upper school math teacher Tony Silk.
Middle school students excelled in this year’s American Mathematics Competition 8, a 25-question, 40-minute multiple choice exam administered by the Mathematical Association of America. Alexander Hu, grade 7, earned a perfect score of 25 on the exam, with fellow seventh graders Rishab Parthasarathy, Kevin Wang, Mark Hu and William Zhao receiving scores of 24. Eighth graders Sidra Xu, Eric Zhu, Aditya Singhvi and Vivian Jin also scored 24.
Other high scorers were Ashley Hu and Connie Jiang, both grade 6, Shounak Ghosh and Angela Jia, both grade 7, and eighth grader Arya Maheshwari, who each earned 23 points. Daniel Wang, Mariamma Vazhaeparambil, Anika Fuloria and Luisa Pan, all grade 8; Akhilesh Chegu and David Dai, both grade 7; Riya Gupta and Stephen Xia, both grade 6; and Ethan Liu, grade 5, all scored an impressive 22.
Harker recently placed among the top 25 schools nationwide in two math contests, according to National Assessment & Testing. Coached by math teacher Anuradha Aiyer, Harker took third place in the 2015 Ciphering Time Trials and 19th overall in the 2016 Four-by-Four Competition. In the Ciphering Time Trials, individual students solve three problems in a series of rounds. In the Four-by-Four Competition, teams of four go through rounds of four problems each, with more difficult problems each successive round.
Stand-out individual performances in the Ciphering Time Trials included Richard Yi’s first place performance in the grade 12 division, in which Allison Wang and Lawrence Li placed fifth and seventh, respectively. Swapnil Garg placed first in the grade 10 division, in which Joanna Lin placed ninth and Jimmy Lin placed 15th. In the grade 11 division, Kai-Siang Ang took 16th.
Garg and Yi competed as a two-person team in the Four-by-Four event, in which they took second place in the middle division. The team of Ang, Wang, Peter Wu, grade 11, and Joanna Lin, grade 10, placed fourth.
Several Harker students placed high in the mid-February MathCounts chapter level contest. In the team competition, eighth graders Cynthia Chen, Grace Huang, Jeffrey Kwan and Vani Mohindra took third place overall. Although they missed first place by only 1.75 points, the team qualified for the state-level competition to be held March 5 at Stanford University.
In individual competition, Chen scored 45 points to earn seventh place. The tough competition was evident, as the three top placers all scored 46 points, while the teams placing four through 10 all scored 45. Ranking was determined by which problems the students answered incorrectly.
The Santa Clara chapter of MathCounts has a reputation for being especially competitive, with more than 400 students from 44 schools taking part.
“The students are excited about the group’s success,” said middle school math chair Vandana Kadam “This is a huge achievement for the school and these students.”
Earlier this month, senior Allison Wang was a national competitor in the “Who Wants to Be a Mathematician” game, hosted by the American Mathematical Society. After going through two rounds of testing in the fall, Wang qualified for the final stage of the game, where she competed against nine other high school students at the Joint Mathematics Meeting in Seattle. More than 2,300 students nationwide took the qualifying tests. Her performance earned Harker’s math department a $1,000 award.
In late June, a team of Harker rising juniors took second place overall in the 9/10 level at the national TEAMS (Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science) competition in Grapevine, Texas. The team of Kai-Siang Ang, Neymika Jain, Evani Radiya-Dixit, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Arjun Subramaniam, Peter Wu and team captain David Zhu also finished second in the problem solving competition and were among the top 10 teams in the prepared presentation portion of the event. “The team had the best showing yet of any Harker team who has competed in this event,” said Harker math teacher Anthony Silk, who coached the team.
The TEAMS competition begins every year at the state level, in which students answer multiple-choice math and science questions, as well as essay questions related to the year’s chosen topic. The top three teams from each state are then invited to the national competition, which has categories for written problems, prepared presentation and problem solving.
The American Scholastic Mathematics Association recently published the results of its annual mathematics contest, and Harker earned first place in the senior division (grades 9-12) and first place with special merit in the junior/intermediate division (grades 7-9). The contest is done by mail during the fall semester. Each participating school receives packages of question sets, which are opened on designated dates over a period of months. Students have 35 minutes to answer each question. Answers are scored once the last examination is administered. Schools from all around the world participated, including China, Czech Republic, Bahrain, Vietnam, Kenya, Kuwait, Indonesia, Austria and Poland.
Harker upper school math students collectively placed first in the country in the 2014 Fall Startup Event math contest, administered by National Assessment and Testing. The test consisted of 100 problems and had a time limit of 30 minutes, requiring students not only to have the skills to solve problems quickly, but also to know which problems to skip.
Students were coached by upper school math teacher Misael-Jose Fisico. The combined placements of all the students led to Harker being declared first place nationwide.
Swapnil Garg was the first-place winner in the ninth-grade division, with classmates Rajiv Movva, Joanna Lin and Shaya Zarkesh earning fifth, 11th and 18th, respectively. In the 10th-grade division, Misha Ivkov placed sixth and David Zhu placed 11th. Harker’s other first-place winner was Richard Yi in the 11th-grade division. Also placing in this division were Allison Wang (fifth) and Lawrence Li (13th). Finally, in the 12th grade division, Ashwath Thirumalai took third, followed closely by Patrick Lin in fourth, while Rahul Jayaraman and Suzy Lou placed 14th and 16th, respectively.
July 23, 2014 UPDATE 2: Congratulations to Vikram Sundar ’14, who earned a gold medal at this year’s International Physics Olympiad in Astana, Kazakhstan! As one of three gold medalists (alongside two silver medalists) on the U.S. team, Sundar was instrumental in helping the U.S. tie for third place overall in the event, in which 86 countries participated.
June 9, 2014 UPDATE: Vikram Sundar ’14, will be one of only five U.S. International Physics Olympiad team members heading to the International Physics Olympiad to be held from July 13 to 21, 2014 in Astana, Kazakhstan! Go Vikram-best of luck in this prestigious event!
May 22, 2014 Four Harker students are among America’s brightest emerging physicists, who will gather at Physics Boot Camp in College Park, Md., later this month, to train and hopefully qualify for the final U.S. Physics Olympiad Team.
Harker students who qualified are Rahul Sridhar, grade 12; Vikram Sundar, grade 12; Andrew Zhang, grade 11; and Kevin Zhu, grade 12. They will be vying for one of the five spots on the team (plus an alternate), who will travel to Astana, Kazakhstan, from July 13-21. There, more than 400 student scholars from 92 nations will test their physics knowledge, competing with the best in the world.
“This must be some kind of record!” said Jason Bardi, director of media services at the American Institute of Physics, which administers the test, runs the boot camp and sponsors the team’s trip to the Olympiad. “It’s tremendous because [Harker] kids are competing with all the huge, powerhouse science magnet public schools on the East Coast, like Stuyvesant and Montgomery Blair, which together have only three members on the team — as well as all the other high schools in the country,” he said.
Over the past 10 years, every U.S. Physics Team member traveling to the international competition has returned with a medal. In 2009, Anand Natarajan ’09 earned a gold medal at the International Physics Olympiad in Mexico. Harker sends a student to the boot camp most years, but has not had four members in recent memory.
The U.S. team is selected from 19 students who have emerged through a rigorous exam taken by 4,277 students. Eleven of the 19 finalists are students are from California; nine of them are from the Bay Area, including Gunn High School, Mission High School, Monta Vista High School, Palo Alto High School and Saratoga High School. The full list is here: http://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/2014-United-States-Physics-Team-Announced.cfm.
“The competition for a position on the U.S. Physics Team is intense and each student who participated in the 2014 selection process is deserving of recognition,” said Beth Cunningham, executive officer of the American Association of Physics Teachers. “They are the future of America’s success in physics-related fields. AAPT is honored to recognize the exceptional scholars who qualified for the team and to support their further participation in the International Physics Olympiad.”
An integral part of the team experience is the training camp. Most of the students invited to the camp are the top science student in their high school. For many, it is their first chance to meet other students who are truly their peers. The training camp is a crash course in the first two years of university physics. Students learn at a very fast pace. They have an opportunity to hear about cutting edge research from some of the community’s leading physicists. At the end of the training camp, five students will be selected to travel to Kazakhstan for the international competition.
The coaches for the 2014 U.S. Physics Team are Paul Stanley, academic director; Andrew Lin, senior coach; JiaJia Dong and David Fallest, coaches; and Lucy Chen, assistant coach.
The U.S. Physics Team is sponsored by the generous support of private donors and the member societies of the American Institute for Physics.
About AAPT AAPT is an international organization for physics educators, physicists and industrial scientists, with members worldwide. Dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching, AAPT provides awards, publications, and programs that encourage teaching practical application of physics principles, support continuing professional development, and reward excellence in physics education. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland.
This story was submitted by Harker lower school math teacher Stephanie Woolsey.
For the seventh time, third grade math students have earned first place in the region in the Continental Mathematics League contest. The region includes 15 U.S. states as well as the countries of Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
Held in a series of three meets, students individually complete six different questions at each meet, earning one point for each correct answer. The top six scores for each meet become the team score for that month, with the “team” members fluctuating based on who scores the highest each time. This year, two Harker students, Brian Chen and Saavi Kumar, earned perfect scores of 18. Both students earned a medal for being the top-scoring students at Harker, as well as an additional medal for being national winners. Certificates went to Connie Jiang, Michael Pflaging, Stephen Xia and Sally Zhu, each of whom earned scores of 17, missing just one question over the three meets.